Tag: marriage act

Alison McMeekin has a very important story in today’s Telegraph. She reports that according to federal Labor MP Graham Perrett, it was lawyers and legislators–not God–who wrote the Marriage Act, and so it should be changed to reflect “the views and values of Australians today:”

“It is now time to enact this legislation and raise future generations of children who won’t believe that once upon a time same sex couples in Australia could not marry. The love between same sex couples is no different to that of opposite sex couples and deserves no less the public recognition, the celebration and symbolism which the wonderful institution of marriage bestows on all committed relationships.”

Oh, give me a break! Of course God didn’t write the Marriage Act. But he did design the concept of marriage to be the best way of building cohesive societies and raising well-balanced children! For thousands of years mankind has understood this and maintained a special place for the institution of marriage as “the union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life.” Apparently Mr Perrett considers himself much smarter than the best thinkers of the ages, who have always held that marriage need not be redefined from time-to-time to satisfy a morally degenerate elite.

“[It is] unjust that two people who love each other are unable to marry each other because of their sexual orientation” Mr Perrett told parliament.

Why exactly is it unjust? I doubt Mr Perrett or his two homosexual brothers actually read God’s Word in their Roman Catholic youth. Had they done so they would understand that the concept of justice flows not from the magnanimity of fickle lawmakers but from the desire to see the Creator’s perfect character reflected in the dealings of imperfect man. There is an objective truth involved here, which cannot be changed on a whim. Perhaps “unjust” in this case should more properly be rendered “no fair” in the whiney inflection of my six year-old’s full-flighted petulance. And just as my daughter’s case can be shot down with a rational question or two I ask Mr Perrett and his supporters, is it ‘unjust’ that ten people “who love each other are unable to marry each other because of their number“? Or that “a man and a dog who love each other are unable to marry each other because of their species?” Surely this kind of ‘justice’ means that the “final vestige of discrimination” is not the gender issue at all, but rather the number of people involved, the species, or the reciprocated love of inanimate objects … if that’s what lights your fire.

If marriage is no longer to be about the basic family unit and the raising of children then it is about nothing at all. And that’s why Mr Perrett and others like him are wrong. God didn’t write the Marriage Act but he did ordain what marriage was to be. And there’s a very strong body of opinion around this pond that says a Creator and Designer trumps a mere legislator of administrative processes every time.

I don’t really care if Adam Bandt and Andrew Wilkie think there’s “no excuse” for continuing to discriminate against a group of people “simply because of who they love.” The greater injustice is to discriminate against the 98 percent of the population who are heterosexual and who, forsaking all others, pledge their fidelity to a single person of the opposite sex for life, who raise children in a household with both a father and a mother, and who are committed to their children and each other in a way which by definition cannot exist outside of marriage.